U.K. Votes on “Brexit” from EU

When Britons vote in a national referendum on June 23, 2016, on whether to leave the European Union (EU), they will be considering the biggest British departure from Europe since World War II’s Dunkirk evacuation. “Brexit,” the portmanteau coined as shorthand for “British exit,” has been in international headlines for years, owing to the rippling ramifications the exit promises not only for the United Kingdom and its 27 partners in the European Union but also for the world economy. In the run-up to the referendum, voters were fairly evenly split on both sides of the issue, at least according to opinion polls (which had been spectacularly off the mark in their forecasting of the last British parliamentary election, in 2015).

Responding to growing euroskeptism within his Conservative Party, in 2013 British Prime Minister David Cameron first promised to hold a referendum on whether the U.K. should remain in the EU. Even before the flood of migrants and refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Africa swelled in 2015, many Britons had become uneasy about the influx of migrants from elsewhere in the EU (notably Poland) as a result of the EU’s open borders. Capitalizing on this anti-immigrant sentiment, the nationalist UK Independence Party made big gains in recent elections largely at the expense of the Conservatives. Euroskeptics in Britain—which remained outside the euro zone, retaining the pound sterling as its currency—were also alarmed by British financial obligations that came about as a result of the EU’s response to the euro-zone debt crisis and bailout of Greece. They complained that Britain had ceded too much of its sovereignty, and they were frustrated by EU regulations on consumers, employers, and the environment, which, they argued, bound up the British economy in red tape.

Cameron pledged that if he was returned to office in the 2015 election, he would hold the promised referendum by 2017. The Labour and Liberal Democratic parties generally favored remaining within the EU, and there were still many Europhiles within the Conservative Party, including Cameron, who remained committed to British membership, provided that a minimum of reforms could be won (an endeavor he characterized as “Mission Possible”). After triumphing in the election but before setting the date of the referendum, Cameron sought to win concessions from the European Council that would address some of the concerns of those Britons who wanted out of the EU.

In February 2016 he returned from a summit with EU leaders with an agreement that satisfied a good chunk of his wish list: most notably, the British government would be permitted to limit benefits for migrant workers during their first four years in Britain, though this “emergency brake” could be applied only for seven years. Britain was also to be allowed to base benefit payments to the children of immigrant workers on the cost of living in the countries in which those children remained. Moreover, Britain would be exempt from the EU’s “ever-closer union” commitment, allowed to keep the pound sterling as its currency, and reimbursed for money spent on euro-zone bailouts.

The June referendum would be the first vote on continued membership since 1975, just two years after the U.K. had joined the EU’s forerunner, the European Economic Community, in its first round of expansion. Cameron headed up the “remain” campaign, which focused on an organization called Britain Stronger in Europe and argued the benefits of participation in the EU’s single market. Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London, who was widely seen as a challenger for Cameron’s leadership of the Conservative Party, headed up the “leave” effort that coalesced around the Vote Leave campaign. Leave advocates argued that EU membership prevented Britain from negotiating advantageous trade deals. Johnson repeatedly claimed that the EU had “changed out of all recognition” from the common market that Britain had joined in 1973. Both sides made gloom-and-doom proclamations regarding the consequences that would result from their opponents’ winning, and both sides lined up expert testimony and studies supporting their side. They also racked up celebrity endorsements that ranged from the powerful (U.S. Pres. Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde on the remain side; former British foreign minister Lord David Owen and Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump on the leave side) to the glamorous (actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Sir Patrick Stewart backing remaining, and actor Sir Michael Caine and former cricket star Ian Botham in the leave ranks).

Should the leave side win, under article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, Cameron will submit a letter to the president announcing Britain’s intention to leave. A two-year period for negotiating the details of the withdrawal would follow, during which Britain would remain subject to EU regulations. The resulting agreement would have to be approved by the European Council and ratified by the European Parliament and the U.K. Parliament. The prospect of the U.K.’s departure raises the ominous possibility that other countries might attempt to follow. No nation state has yet left the EU, though Greenland, technically a part of Denmark but increasingly under home rule, did pull out of the EU in 1985.

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